The Killers debut Christmas single in London

The Killers debuted their new Christmas single ‘A Great Big Sled’ last night (November 29) as they brought their UK tour to a close in London.

The Las Vegas four-piece surprised the crowd at Brixton Academy when singer Brandon Flowers got behind the piano and announced: “We’ve written this new Christmas song. We ‘re gonna play it for you now”.

He was then joined onstage by Curve singer Toni Halliday for a duet on the festive track which features the line: “I wanna wish you Merry Christmas ho ho ho!”.

The track will be released as a download only from December 11.

In keeping with the Christmas theme the band decked out the stage in festive lights, a huge Sam’s Town banner and a giant gong for their 75 minute set which mainly comprised of tracks from their second album and debut ‘Hot Fuss’.

Following support slots from The Rapture and newcomers David Venn And The Broken Stars, The Killers opened with the title track from their new LP, before sparking mass singalongs for the likes of crowd favourites ‘Somebody Told Me’, ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’, plus recent singles ‘When You Were Young’ and ‘Bones’.

Flowers also played a second brief piano driven version of ‘Sam’s Town’ later in the show before going on to perform new album tracks ‘Read My Mind’, ‘Uncle Jonny’ and ‘For Reasons Unknown’.

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The band closed their festive set, which was watched by Hard-Fi singer Richard Archer and Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell, with ‘Hot Fuss’ favourite ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’, before returning to the stage to reprise ‘Sam’s Town’ closer ‘Exitlude’.

Speaking afterwards about their Christmas charity single, Flowers told NME.COM: “I love the lyrics – it sounds like a Christmas song. It’s got tubular bells, jingle bells and strings and I think it could be a classic. Toni‘s voice just sounds like a Christmas angel too.”

The singer later gave NME.COM a sneak peak of their new festive video which sees Flowers sporting a Santa hat while singing into a Band Aid-style microphone.